Quills is brave enough to be as lurid and ugly as its subject--the Marquis de Sade--but never stirs up much passion. Geoffrey Rush is superbly seedy as the institutionalized Marquis, and Kate Winslet and Joaquin Phoenix are also quite good in their fictional roles as a nurse and an abbe--the Marquis's playthings. Rush energetically brandishes his wicked bon mots and bedraggled bare bones, but the screenplay's most memorable phrase, "puddles of love on the Peruvian marble," is uttered by a supporting stud. The most moving moment, rising out of the muck of his final shit-smearing degradation, is the Marquis's genuine agony upon learning of a friend's having undergone the ultimate tragedy--dying a virgin.